Quotes of the day

posted at 10:41 pm on August 21, 2013 by Allahpundit

He has hired specialists in microtargeting who worked for the presidential campaigns of Mitt Romney and George W. Bush. He has built a sprawling, 50-state fund-raising network, including major Republican players like Harold Simmons, the billionaire backer of a Karl Rove-led “super PAC” that spent $105 million in the 2012 race.

And he is pouring resources into an effort to attract blacks, Hispanics and women to prove that he is a new kind of Republican.

Senior Republicans who are familiar with Mr. Christie’s strategy say it is most closely modeled after Mr. Bush’s bid in 1998 for re-election as governor of Texas. The parallels are clear. Mr. Bush was considered a shoo-in for re-election to the governor’s office, but he and Mr. Rove became determined to win over Hispanic and black voters to demonstrate the governor’s broad appeal to a national audience. Mr. Bush won that race, with 68 percent of the vote, which included more than a third of the Hispanic vote, offering him a powerful credential when he ran for president two years later as “a different kind of Republican.”

***

“The group is there, believe me, and it’s growing by the day, maybe by a factor of 50 times more than what it was in 2011,” Langone tells me. “He’s getting traction with people because people want to win. After 2012, it dawned on a lot of us that we need to have a better candidate, somebody who can connect, and Christie is the person who can do that.” Langone doesn’t make much of criticism of Christie’s handling of Hurricane Sandy: “I know some people say [Christie] got too close to [Obama], but it wasn’t a time for politics and pandering. It was a crisis! I saw it firsthand at NYU’s medical center, and people who get that aren’t unhappy with him.”

Christie has worked diligently to repair his ties to Romney World, which remains influential in national Republican politics. In late March, he had a private dinner with Romney in Boston, and a few days later Romney praised Christie during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Christie then attended Romney’s donor retreat in June, where his aides linked up with Romney’s former finance director, Spencer Zwick, and Romney’s major donors, and courted them at receptions. Last month, he spent time in Las Vegas with casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, one of Romney’s big-dollar supporters during the general election. And for his reelection campaign, he has hired Russ Schriefer, a former Romney adviser and consulting whiz, to produce his campaign ads…

“His early moves have been good,” says Steve Schmidt, a veteran Republican operative who managed the McCain-Palin presidential campaign. “He’s now looking at a decisive reelection victory this year in a blue state, and then he becomes chairman of the Republican Governors Association next year, which will enable him to build all of his relationships to an even greater extent than he has done already. There will always be commentary about [the Sandy controversy], but I don’t think a photograph from five years ago will be an issue in a primary that’s driven, as almost all Republican primaries have been, by electability over ideology.”

Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who encouraged Christie to run last year, agrees. In an interview, he tells me Christie remains a top-tier candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, owing to his willingness to wade into foreign policy and his ability to broaden the Republican coalition. “We’re friendly, and I think extremely highly of him, and he knows I’d be delighted if he became a national candidate,” he says. “Conservatives should recognize his long-term potential.” Christie’s work with Obama during the storm, he acknowledges, “might not have been the high point of his political career, but I was never angry about seeing him do what he needed to do for his state and his reelection.”

***

Mitt Romney’s transparent shifts on policy issues undermined voters’ trust in him. Christie would like to go into a general election with as much of his broad popularity and straight-shooter image intact as possible.

And when you read Christie’s attacks on Sen. Rand Paul (R), you can see a preview of his messaging: He said he didn’t have time for a beer summit with Paul because he has a job where ” you are responsible for actually doing things and not just debating.”

If Christie is going to run by contrasting his record of bipartisan legislative accomplishments with Republicans in Congress who have done nothing but “shout into the wind,” as Christie said at last week’s Republican National Committee summer meeting, he’s going to have to embrace his record.

“The politics — he got three big audiences he’s got to be worried about: New Jersey, where you have a moderate to left-leaning audience. Soon, he’s going to be worried about Republican caucus-goers (in Iowa). Going to be much more conservative. And then at the end, he’s going to be worried about those swing voters,” said Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, a Republican strategist and former George W. Bush campaign spokeswoman…

CNN contributor and New York Times columnist Charles Blow agreed that Christie has some crossover appeal. But his appeal to moderates will hurt him with the hard right in his party.

“This is the kind of Republican that you could get more moderates behind. Maybe you could shave off a few Democrats,” Blow said. “But you cannot escape the Republican primary process and that process is much more conservative than Republicans in general, and definitely much more conservative than the American populace and electorate.”

***

“There’s a lot of suspicious conservatives about Christie ever since he embraced Obama in the last go-round, and my sense is he is making it far more difficult than it needs to be” to mount a bid for his party’s presidential nomination in 2016, Republican strategist Ed Rollins said in an interview.

Christie could argue, based on a strong New Jersey re-election win, “that he has the appeal that most traditional Republicans don’t have, particularly in the Northeast,” Rollins said. “But the problem is, he then has to go into Iowa and South Carolina and New Hampshire and defend those positions. He can’t just dismiss them, and he’ll be facing some very strong candidates who are basically going to hammer him on it.”…

Some party strategists said Christie’s actions demonstrate he’s forging his own path, something that will appeal to Republicans craving a different approach.

“What he’s doing is pretty clever, in that he’s talking to the hearts and minds of Republicans that are still stung by the 2012 loss, but at the same time is putting his own stamp of conservative politics on his governing style in New Jersey,” said Republican strategist Scott Reed, chairman of Washington, D.C.-based Chesapeake Enterprises who ran former Kansas Senator Bob Dole’s 1996 Republican presidential campaign.

***

Christie appears poised to win a resounding November victory in his bid for a second term in a deep-blue state. He’s also set to hit the fundraising trail early next year as the head of the Republican Governors Association. In that role, he will have free rein to make the implicit case nationwide that he is the Republican Party’s best hope for retaking the White House…

“The reaction’s been really good — that’s an understatement,” a Christie confidant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told RCP. “More people realize now how incredible the impact of the storm was on the state, and they respect how he handled it. Not everybody is happy about it, but people generally understand that ultimately the Electoral College wasn’t that close, and it’s not what tipped the balance.”…

The GOP operatives who are quietly paving the way for their clients’ potential campaigns have Christie’s potentially fatal weaknesses near the forefront of their minds.

“Chris Christie’s strategy is brilliant — it worked swimmingly for Jon Huntsman,” one Republican consultant said sarcastically. “Being the ‘adult’ in a Republican primary might win you accolades on ‘Morning Joe.’ It will not win you the nomination. I don’t know where his base is — certainly not in the early primary states. He’s got a Rudy Giuliani problem. Where the hell do you win?”

***

Any evaluation of Chris Christie’s presidential fitness must also grant that some of his actions have been inexcusable. He grew naively intimate with President Obama after Hurricane Sandy. His attack on House Republicans for trying to eliminate waste in the disaster relief bill was petulant. His speech at the 2012 Republican convention was self-serving. He can be impulsive and vindictive, the political equivalent of a neutron bomb—you lob him into a capital city and then run for your life in the opposite direction.

But what can’t be ignored, and what’s illustrated so well by his strip-mining of Sweeney’s budget, is that Christie’s explosions have redounded to the benefit of conservatives, blowing apart New Jersey’s Democrat establishment and creating a new political paradigm in one of the nation’s bluest states. Christie may be a neutron bomb, but he’s our neutron bomb, and beneath all the wires and fuses is a solid core of conservative principles that deserves national recognition.

***

Senator Rand Paul took a swipe at Governor Chris Christie in an interview today, continuing the back-and-forth that Christie started last month by criticizing libertarians.

Breaking on Hot Air

Blowback

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Yeah, we all know that he prays in the Oval Office, about five times a day.

I really don’t care about the faith of the President. His two worthless brats are a different story. Because the rat-eared coward and shaved Yeti don’t attend a church, neither do the mini-moochers. And I think that every child should have some grounding in faith.

Some potatoes are too hot to handle. Same with those two black thugs who shot a baby in the face because the mom had no money when they mugged her.

Liam on August 22, 2013 at 7:49 AM

That didn’t seem to be the problem when a black street thug was shot by a “white Hispanic.” As I posted yesterday, the real story here is the almost complete media black out. If it had been a black college student killed by white teens, the marches would already have been organized, the comparisons to Till by fat stupid celebraties would have already started, and the race industry would already be outraged.

It’s an even bigger story, when you add in all the muggings and assaults where the attackers said they were doing it “for Trayvon.” The liberal media ignore all those incidents. I’m certain that if races were reversed, we’d be hearing about ‘white backlash’ and ‘white riots’.

I imagine a thread on all that we’ve discussed these past few minutes would garner literally thousands of hits. People would be coming out of the woodwork to comment. Captain Kirk might even beam in. *LOL*

Well, what with the scandals, the implosion of Obamacare, the rise in unemployment, the stock market plummet…. what are they going to talk about at MSDNC? You’d rather Mika show off her oragami skills?

I imagine a thread on all that we’ve discussed these past few minutes would garner literally thousands of hits. People would be coming out of the woodwork to comment. Captain Kirk might even beam in. *LOL*

Liam on August 22, 2013 at 7:57 AM

Yeah. I’m sure Libfree is busy making “Free the Duncan Three” posters even as we speak.

On a related note, there was an interesting discussion on local talk radio this morning. About a black racist who runs a website talking about the coming race war and how whites are weakening the black race. He talks about blacks having to kill more whites than their Christian hearts can stand.

He also is a federal employee working for ICE. The discussion focused on where the First Amendment ends and this becomes a fireable offense. It is also a given that if this were a white racist he would already be fired. Personally, I think that line is crossed the minute this guy is identified as being a federal employee. It is one things to have these ideas but another entirely when it is known he works for us. I’d hope that every white person in his office gives him a big sloppy hug. Every morning.

I read that news report. Allegedly, he says it’s a ‘humorous’ site or something. Still, he’s facing trouble in his job because off-work activity of an employee is regulated by his department.

Since he’s black, and has union protection, I can’t see him being fired. At most, he’ll have to take down the site. If he was white, though, it would have gone as you said. And Morning Joe, Chris Matthews, and other liberal talking heads would be bytching about the incident for a week.

That didn’t seem to be the problem when a black street thug was shot by a “white Hispanic.” As I posted yesterday, the real story here is the almost complete media black out. If it had been a black college student killed by white teens, the marches would already have been organized, the comparisons to Till by fat stupid celebraties would have already started, and the race industry would already be outraged.
HA is cowardly for not weighing in on the story.
Happy Nomad on August 22, 2013 at 7:53 AM

I hope they cover the story today.

Has HotAir lost its bite? I hope not. Why the trepidation? What is the hesitancy here?

Has HotAir lost its bite? I hope not. Why the trepidation? What is the hesitancy here?

Where’s the fearlessness that we saw in the days of Vent?

bluegill on August 22, 2013 at 8:16 AM

The liberal blogosphere will go nuts, that’s why. Ten seconds after the thread goes up, all liberal fingers will be pointing to the ‘finally-and-fully-admitted racism of the radical extremist right-wing Tea Party’. We might even get Chrissy Matthews going apoplectic for an hour on his show. Of course, it can still be done, but the headline would have to be carefully chosen, I imagine.

There is no Hot Air thread on the “Duncan Three” because there’s controversy. Traditionally, black people who kill white people are punished, harshly (as they should be). These kids have been arrested and charged as adults.

I actually feel bad when anyone gets banned, especially if it’s someone who actually cares about the issues and isn’t spamming.

bluegill on August 21, 2013 at 10:29 AM

I didn’t address this yesterday, but after your earlier related post in this thread, I will now! :)

Do you feel bad everytime someone gets banned here, even when they knowingly flaunt the TOS? Did you see this?

One piece of advice for all who comment here. Worth exactly what you are paying me for it. Those that seek to admonish the mods here would be wise to desist. Both Ed and Allah have had their fill of it. You have been warned.

Bmore on August 21, 2013 at 11:07 AM

Who could blame Ed & Allah for not tolerating abuse against them? We’re their guests here – it’s not unreasonable of them to expect us to have a general respect for them…if someone who has issues with authority ends up immaturely lashing out against them because of it, Ed, Allah, and the rest would be foolish to ignore the behavior whenever they’re aware of it.

It looks like madisonconservative is back in good standing. I wish the same could be true for SWalker, but I don’t believe he’s willing to do what’d be necessary to even attempt to return (of course, it’s possible I’m wrong about this.)

If anything happened to me here like what happened to ALT, I would like to think that you all would rally for me.

I don’t expect anything would happen to me, though, since I am just expressing concerns, and am doing so in as polite a way as I can.

bluegill on August 21, 2013 at 11:24 PM

We haven’t know you as long as we have known ALT but I would advocate you getting a second chance if you made a mistake.

Cindy Munford on August 21, 2013 at 11:32 PM

As long as you’d be properly apologetic, I agree with Cindy, bluegill, but how is it that you are so out of touch to not realize you are not a sympathetic person here at HA, who couldn’t possibly receive enthusiatic support if you ever were in alt’s position?

Your obliviousness about this exasperates people – what do you believe is preventing you from understanding & accepting this?

There is no Hot Air thread on the “Duncan Three” because there’s controversy. Traditionally, black people who kill white people are punished, harshly (as they should be). These kids have been arrested and charged as adults.

What else do you want?

And, by the way, the crime has been widely covered.

urban elitist on August 22, 2013 at 8:30 AM

You are as ignorant as you are obnoxious:

Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks. Forty-five percent of their victims are white, 43 percent are black, and 10 percent are Hispanic. When whites commit violent crime, only three percent of their victims are black.

Some potatoes are too hot to handle. Same with those two black thugs who shot a baby in the face because the mom had no money when they mugged her.

Liam on August 22, 2013 at 7:49 AM

That didn’t seem to be the problem when a black street thug was shot by a “white Hispanic.” As I posted yesterday, the real story here is the almost complete media black out. If it had been a black college student killed by white teens, the marches would already have been organized, the comparisons to Till by fat stupid celebraties would have already started, and the race industry would already be outraged.

On a related note, there was an interesting discussion on local talk radio this morning. About a black racist who runs a website talking about the coming race war and how whites are weakening the black race. He talks about blacks having to kill more whites than their Christian hearts can stand.

He also is a federal employee working for ICE. The discussion focused on where the First Amendment ends and this becomes a fireable offense. It is also a given that if this were a white racist he would already be fired. Personally, I think that line is crossed the minute this guy is identified as being a federal employee. It is one things to have these ideas but another entirely when it is known he works for us. I’d hope that every white person in his office gives him a big sloppy hug. Every morning.

Happy Nomad on August 22, 2013 at 8:04 AM

A Department of Homeland Security employee who works on, among other things, the procurement of guns and ammunition for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, spends his nights and weekends preparing for a coming race war and advocating for anti-gay causes … .

I didn’t address this yesterday, but after your earlier related post in this thread, I will now! :)
Do you feel bad everytime someone gets banned here, even when they knowingly flaunt the TOS? Did you see this?

To be honest, I don’t really know the circumstances behind all the bannings. I guess I was imagining people getting banned for doing something inadvertent or without having been given any warning.